Frozen Letter (CD)

Spider Bags

Amoeba Review

08/04/2014

Chapel Hill’s Spider Bags kick up some furious dust on their debut album for Merge Records. Songs like “Back With You Again in the World” deliver the best in rollicking, country-fueled rock ‘n’ roll, with Dan McGee’s world-weary voice promising “I’ll always be honest with you” amid raunchy saxophones like a man back from tour and ready to make amends. “Japanese Vacation” is delightfully childlike and catchy yet deceptively well-crafted—it’s hard to pull off a song with lyrics like “spider crawl against the wall” without sounding like The Wiggles, but McGee and co. pull it off with aplomb. McGee, of course, is no stranger to the garage scene—he’s formerly of New Jersey greats DC Snipers—so he knows his way around a rock riff and how to make the same ol’ sound special, like the way the “Chem Trails” lodges in your head and then expands into psychedelic colors. “Why you wanna be a Rolling Stone?” McGee asks in the snappy “Summer of ’79.” Probably because Spider Bags make it sound like so much damn fun! Don’t look to Spider Bags for anything too serious—druggy ballad “Coffin Car” is about as close as they get to something heavy, but even then, the song erupts in its final portion to a fist-pumping party song. We wouldn’t have it any other way; Frozen Letter ain’t nothin’ but a good time.